He Disappoints, As Always
by Revriley
Summary: A fragment of Maiza's youth - or rather, his resentment towards his father. Written for thegoldenhigh on tumblr, loosely connected to the theme of Day 5: Emotion for Baccanoweek.


**This was written last month for thegoldenhigh on Tumblr. I apologize if young Maiza feels out of character somehow here - we know so little about his childhood, before he became a teenager.**

* * *

It was only several seconds after the gunsmoke cleared and the hart fell did Maiza realize he had been shot.

No - not shot. Grazed. The bullet had sliced through his coat sleeve and skin and left a searing line of pain in its wake. He hissed and clamped his free hand to the wound on his upper left arm.

"It is dead."

He turned to look at his father, who had uttered the statement atop his horse with only the barest hint of pride in his voice. Behind them, several servants scurried forward to harvest the fallen hart.

Maiza eyed the still-smoking musket in his father's hands.

"That is enough for to-day. We shall return to the manor."

His father snapped the reins of his horse. Maiza hurriedly mounted his own horse, his open skin stretching in protest. It was only once they were moving did Maiza grit his teeth and hunch in the saddle, clutching his own musket and reins in his left hand and pressing his other hand to the wound.

 _Ask me if I'm alright._

 _Tell me that you're sorry for shooting me._

 _Lie to me and say it was an accident. At least say that._

 _Anything._

The silence stretched between them. Maiza shivered from the October chill and hoped that it would perhaps be kind enough to numb him from his troubles. The red brambled countryside stretched out to the horizon on his left, rising and falling in hues of emmer. He gazed upon it and fancied a braver version of himself, one that dropped his musket, snapped the reins and rode off into the wilderness never to be seen again.

Little indulgences in such fantasies sustained him now, but he held little hope that they would continue to do so.

"Had you moved any closer to the left, you would have skewed the trajectory. What do you have to say to that, Maiza?"

It was with sluggish shock that Maiza realized his father was speaking. To him.

He hesitated. "I-"

"Speak up and don't waffle."

Maiza bit the inside of his cheek. "I'm sorry, father."

The answer seemed to displease his father, who audibly _tsked_ before spurring his horse on faster. Maiza dropped his gaze downward, resentment writhing in his stomach.

Maiza's younger brother Gretto was speaking with Dolfin the stablemaster when the two of them finally returned to the stables. As soon as they came into view, Gretto waved and ran toward them with poorly disguised excitement. He was a young, sweet boy of six, his face softened by baby-fat and framed by fine brown hair pulled back into a loose ponytail.

"Maiza!" He called. "Maiza, I'm so glad you're back! How did the hunt go?"

It was a wholly innocent question, motivated solely by sincere interest in Maiza's affairs. A lump sprang to his throat.

"We felled a hart," his father announced, and now he did sound like he was proud of it. The hart was difficult prey, and worthy of boasting about. "I expect the hounds will have caught a few hares, and your brother acquired several pheasants to his name. I expect we shall eat them come evening."

His father dismounted. While the stablemaster took command of the horse, Maiza's father stood over Gretto and studied him for a moment. "I think it is about time you learned to shoot as well. Overdue, in fact. We shall begin lessons on Friday. See that you are prepared."

Gretto nodded dutifully. Maiza busied himself with dismounting his own horse, leading it over to the stablemaster's assistant Velasco by the water trough.

Velasco noticed the blood staining Maiza's coat sleeve immediately. "I will fetch you bandages -"

"No," Maiza muttered. "It is nothing."

"Young master-"

"It is nothing. Leave it be." Something in Maiza had recoiled at the title. _Young Master_. The very thought of it tasted bitter, and he'd snapped at Velasco more forcefully than he'd meant to.

Concern lingered in Velasco's eyes, but he bowed his head in acquiescence. Maiza's breath hitched.

"Please - don't do that," he said. "I never asked for that. I never - I never wanted - I -"

Velasco's grip on the reins of Maiza's horse tightened. "I shall try, Young Master."

Maiza's jaw twitched. "That, too."

"Maiza!"

Velasco's face smoothed in relief, and he excused himself to attend to Maiza's horse. Maiza turned and nodded at his approaching brother. His father was gone.

"Maiza, I wanted to tell you -" Gretto's voice broke off, and he leaned forward and took hold of Maiza's left arm. "You're bleeding."

"It's only a scratch." Maiza tugged the torn fabric of his sleeve down in a futile attempt to hide said scratch. "Don't worry about it."

Gretto withdrew his hand and anxiously fidgeted with his fingers. "Does it hurt?"

"No." It was a half-truth. It _had_ hurt, but the pain had dulled now to a tepid throbbing.

Gretto was silent for a moment. Finally, he bit his lip and looked up at Maiza with wide eyes. "Father said that I shouldn't have spoken to Dolfin earlier. He said that we should only speak to servants as much as we have too. He was so mad." He sniffed, and rubbed at his eyes with his fists. "I'm sorry..."

Hot anger coiled around Maiza's heart. "Is that so."

Gretto nodded, and this time swiped furiously at his tears with the sleeve of his shirt.

Something inside Maiza broke. He fell to his knees and took Gretto by his shoulders.

"Gretto, I want you to listen to me. You did _nothing wrong_."

His little brother's reply was too muffled by tears to be understood.

"Gretto, would you say that Dolfin is a good man?"

With a wet hiccup, Gretto looked up and over at the stablemaster, who stood uncomfortably next to Velasco in the shadow of the closest stable.

"Y-yes..."

"Would you say that Velasco is a good man?"

"Uh-huh."

"Can you think of any reason why it would be wrong to speak with someone who is good? Someone who works for you and takes care of you?"

Tears welled up in Gretto's eyes once more. " _No I can't,_ " he wailed. "I didn't understand at all...!"

Maiza drew his brother into an embrace, and held him tightly as he cried into Maiza's chest.

"There, there," he murmured, patting Gretto's back with awkward movements. It had been a while since he last hugged his younger brother, he realized, and that frightened him.

Once Gretto calmed down, Maiza got to his feet and ruffled Gretto's hair. "I know that Father talks a lot and is very tall," he said, "but on this he is wrong. Our servants are people and deserve to be treated as such. It is something that Father will never understand."

 _Nor that his sons deserve their own feelings just as much._

* * *

Before dinner, Maiza was called into his father's study. It was an overbearing, oppressing office, styled in dark mahogany and rich velvet cloths. His father sat writing at his desk when he entered, forcing Maiza to stand and wait with his back stiff and hands folded behind his back for several minutes.

Finally, his father set down his quill.

"You are my eldest son, and thus the heir apparent to the family. I expect you to set a good example for Gretto to follow."

Maiza shifted his weight from his right foot to his left, and wondered if his father had learned of the brothers' conversation by the stables.

"I have called you in here because it is increasingly clear that you are lacking, boy. You drag your feet; you slouch when you think I am not looking; you sequester yourself away in my library for hours on end as if to avoid your responsibilities. Of course, I approve of independent study - in fact, I encourage it - but I suspect you are making ill use of your time there. You skulk, you frown, you _fritter_."

He shrugged, and turned his hands outward in an open, calculatingly casual gesture.

"What am I to do with you? I had assumed that a bibliophile son would comprehend the burden of the aristocrat, and that you would grow into a man capable of shouldering them. I see that I was wrong." He paused. "Gretto is still young enough to be malleable; I will not make the same mistake as I did with you - I will make sure to influence his education at every step this time. That boy has potential."

He clasped his hands together on his desk, his face impassive. "You are falling behind, Maiza. The time has come for you to stop this petulant behavior you are so keen to perpetuate and for you to wholly embrace your duties as befitting a young noble. I will have your tutor strictly monitor your time in the library and completely reorganize your schedule. If you are a man, you will see that it is for the best."

Maiza dug his fingernails into the soft skin of his palms and tried to quell the hot breath of helpless fury locked behind his lips. The familiar resentment from earlier now seethed in his lungs and scorched his throat and demanded justice, roared out for him to stand his ground and voice his objections at the slander of his character.

 _So you want to suppress me,_ Maiza thought, keeping his eyes trained on the far wall as his father talked. _You want to suppress my thoughts, my feelings, my very soul until you have an empty shell of clay to sculpt in your fashion_. Gretto - small, naïve Gretto - was already primed to undergo such molding, impressionable as he was. It helped too, that Gretto was already said to take after his father in appearances. Maiza existed as a reminder of his father's dead wife, but _Gretto_ was full of promise by way of physicality alone. He had their father's favor.

"...young woman that I have arranged for you to meet next Wednesday at their evening ball. Is that understood?"

Maiza exhaled. Counted to five.

"Yes, father."

"You will forget your insolence and promise to reform?"

"Yes, father."

"You will not disappoint me?"

"I won't, father."

His father leant back in his chair. "Then there is nothing more to say."

He picked up his quill, dipped the tip into the inkhorn, and resumed writing.

Maiza waited for several seconds. When it was clear that the conversation was over, he backpedaled and slipped out the door Once it was shut, he looked both ways down the hallway before fleeing for his bedchamber as quickly as possible.

It was with shaking hands that he forced the door to his bedchamber open, and he slammed it closed without caring if the servants should hear.

 _Damn him._

Maiza pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, struggling to compose himself.

He failed.

 _Damn him. Damn him, damn him, damn him._

With his back against the door, Maiza slid downwards until he was sitting, the cold of the stone floor seeping through his breeches. Shuddering, he curled his fingers into his hair and hunched forward until his forehead was practically resting in his knees.

He sobbed until he forgot how to breathe.


End file.
